The new Victoria Gate shopping centre has brought a super-casino, high-end boutiques and a towering John Lewis store to the doorstep of Mabgate, Leeds’ gritty, graffiti-smeared artistic hub. Now locals fear the city’s ‘beating heart’ is at risk

Temple of Boom, an independent music venue in Mabgate, could be under threat.
Photograph: Temple of Boom

It is Saturday evening and a queue of clubbers stretches around Hope House, an old metal foundry built in 1820 in the Leeds neighbourhood of Mabgate. Inside, German house music specialist Motor City Drum Ensemble is performing a sold-out show. Revellers undulate to the bass around four towering, homemade wooden sound systems.

It’s an unconventional fundraising strategy for an educational programme aimed at children excluded from school – but an effective one. The club night is in service of Music and Arts Production (Map), a charity which provides at-risk young people with access to a range of art and music courses. Map is partly funded by events like this – named Cosmic Slop – and by hosting independent creative traders and art exhibitions in the Hope House building itself.

It is a fragile way to fund a charity – and one which will not, with any likelihood, work for much longer. This month, Leeds’ new, glistening Victoria Gate shopping centre opened near Mabgate. Complete with a super casino, high-end boutiques and a towering John Lewis department store, it’s an imposing cultural and economic statement with the power to change whole neighbourhoods.

Tom Smith, co-founder of Map, fears they will bear the brunt of that change. Their 10-year lease expires in 2019. “The landlord bought the property knowing there’s going to be a John Lewis shopping centre next door, and it will be worth a fortune in five or 10 years, so they’ve sat on it,” he says. But not any more: “They’re on their 14th amendment of an application for planning permission now – it’s just the heritage committee that is holding it back.”

Mabgate is something of a hidden gem in artistic circles. It’s a gritty, graffiti-smeared space on the fringe of the city centre, and until recently was home to a red-light district. Peppered with empty takeaway wrappers and abandoned two-storey industrial mills, it has also long been the unofficial ‘Leeds arts quarter’, home to all manner of artists, musicians, writers, photographers and designers, attracted by the cheap rents and sense of freedom.

The Victoria Gate mall in Magbate was built to house a huge new John Lewis shop

As the John Lewis store prepared to open, locals began to see a change in the area. Property developers began circling; the sex trade was effectively legalised in another part of the city centre, drawing away the prostitutes. It became clear that the neighbourhood was being cleaned up with an eye to wholescale “regeneration”.

“We found out through tricking one of the surveyors, by telling him we knew about the plans for the area,” says Simon Walker, who manages the Temple of Boom music venue in Mabgate. “We got him to show us a front elevation for this area. The place we’re sat in now was completely flattened.”

Few people here own their land, and with leases expiring, locals would be powerless to resist the new plans.

“It was gutting to see because over the years we’ve financed all the maintenance of these buildings, and it has become the beating heart of what we call the arts quarter,” says Walker. “It’s not nice to see landlords or the council making any plans behind our backs. It would be nice to think that we can convince them that what we’re doing is worthwhile and is of value.”

One of several Sex Pistols covers by Jamie Reid, who had a studio in Temple Works. Photograph: Alamy

For evidence of how regeneration can flatten a cultural community, locals point to Holbeck, an area on the other side of Leeds city centre, home to Temple Works.

This vast Victorian flax mill has an Egyptian-style facade that gives it the air of something out of Indiana Jones; it is one of the few Grade-I listed buildings in the area. Until earlier this year, Temple Works housed 65 resident artists, hosted fundraising events and held an artistic education programme. Jamie Reid, who designed the Sex Pistols’ graphics, had a studio here.

The manager was Susan Williamson, a social scientist by trade. “I was originally there to sort out what we could do in terms of planning to turn it into a big cultural venue like the Tate Modern,” she says over the phone from her new office in London. “But, due to ownership and funding, we ended up running it as an alternative, underground place.”

For nearly a decade, Temple Works was a cornerstone of the local creative community. Then the council announced the area was being regenerated, and the owners wanted to sell.

“I myself found a wonderful buyer for the place,” Williamson recalls. “But they were gazumped by Burberry and we all had to leave.”

Though the opening of the fashion brand’s new distribution centre was put on hold after the Brexit vote, the artistic centre that was Temple Works is now gone for good.

“It was a really inspiring place,” says artist Dave Lynch, citing a project he worked on with the scientist Mile Nix to project images on to clouds. “It was the size –being in such a big space allows you to think about big things. The cloud projection is a big thing really, a ridiculous idea. But I was in a place where I could test out things on a large scale.”

Reid, too, says his work was influenced by the surroundings there. “It always is. That’s why working in sterile galleries can result in dull exhibitions.”

How did he feel when Temple Works was shuttered? I don’t like it but it’s always been like that,” he says, noting that there is an irony to such developments. “Croydon was ‘regenerated’ in the 60s at the expense of the community, and now the regeneration is being knocked down and regenerated. The Victorian parts they missed in the first wave are now the ‘heritage quarter’.”

Byron Street Mills, one of the shared workspaces in Mabgate that are threatened by new development. Photograph: Paul Jones

In an emailed statement, a Leeds City Council spokesperson argued that “much of the regeneration that has taken place has been anchored by the creative and digital sectors” and it has created significant employment. They added: “In relation to Temple Works, after the temporary licence for artists expired, the council successfully supported all organisations located there to find new facilities where they wanted to stay in the city. We also provided logistical and property support to enable them to find new locations.”

The statement described Leeds’ bid to become the European Capital of Culture in 2023. “It will be supported by a new culture strategy for the city, which will include a plan for future cultural infrastructure. This may not always take the form of major capital investments but rather consider alternatives such as studio spaces, maker spaces, community centres and parks.”

Meanwhile, cultural infrastructure such as Map is fighting to stay alive. “We are helping a lot of kids in Leeds who are in really bad situations,” Smith says. “If we have to move into a different place, we’ll definitely have to downsize. Which means we’ll be a much less effective organisation with a lot less benefits to young people.”

They are working with a network of partners on a bid to buy the whole building of Hope House, in order to provide a collective sanctuary for independent creatives who work in the same areas as the charity does: music production, illustration and more. Smith dreams of offering an apprenticeship scheme within that network.

But there’s nothing to guarantee that they won’t be outbid, just like Temple Works. If that happens, the loss to the neighbourhood could be profound.

“It’s really important for people to be able to express themselves; to be part of a scene,” says Smith. “There are a lot of people that come to live in Leeds purely because of the music and art. I don’t think the council always appreciate the indirect revenue it brings in.”